Stakeout Following Senate Policy Committee Luncheon with Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)

Interview

SEN. REID: We're working on the Consumer Product Safety Commission legislation. We've focused a lot of attention on toys because that's the most glaring problem we have in the consumer safety area. But this legislation's only an example of the hands-off, keep- government-away-from-things attitude that this White House has had.

As more products flood our market, what has happened with the no- government, let-the-market-work-things-out? The Bush administration has slashed budgets every place. As indicated pretty clearly in the press the last 24 hours, there was a recall of 2 million toys last year, consumer product safety. They have one person that works in that office. We've now learned his name is Bob. He's going to retire soon. But that's the only person that they have to check the safety of toys. Sadly, it's that way through the entire product safety commission. They just are underequipped. The one full-time tester they have for toys works in an underequipped lab to test the safety for toys.

The hands-off approach to governing hasn't worked. They refuse to change course in Iraq, even though we have outlined time and time again of the huge cost to the American people -- more than $400 million every day, seven days a week, no weekends off, no vacations. They refuse to address the housing crisis. Absolutely, we tried to do that last week.

We keep hearing, "Well, we're willing to do something." What is that? They refuse to reverse the disaster economic policies that we see, that are sliding us toward recession. They want the status quo. They're doing everything to maintain the status quo.

The "wait and see" attitude of this administration isn't working. For example, the president in his press conference says, let's wait and see what happens with the first stimulus package before we do anything more. In the meantime, people are losing their homes. The president's HOPE NOW program is just simply not working at all. And our economic stimulus for housing is languishing because they won't let us move to this.

So we're going to keep working for the change the American people deserve, and in the process, hopefully we can move through the bill we have before the Senate today. Thursday's a big day here on Capitol Hill; we have the budget that will be reported out of the committee. And next week, for a lot of the week we'll be working on the budget, which comes every year.

Okay?

Q Senator Reid?

SEN. REID: I hear you.

Q The president today at the White House made a plea for the Congress to consider the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, which he says is more important than ever in light of the security issues that are arising in Latin America, with the Venezuelan troops amassing on the Colombian border. Does that change your mind that the Senate should -- and the House should consider this free trade agreement?

SEN. REID: Well, of course it is being considered in the Ways and Means Committee in the House, and the Finance Committee over here. I had a meeting last week with Senators Baucus and Grassley, and it's being considered. I'm not a big fan of these trade agreements. I think they've been unfair to American workers. We have -- we've lost since NAFTA some 3 million American jobs, manufacturing jobs.

So, you know, I'm happy along with the whole Democratic caucus to take a look at that Colombia free trade agreement and we're doing that. Here in the Senate we have to wait until the House acts, because if we acted first we'd have to come back and do it again. We're not going to do it twice. We're going to wait and see what the House does on that.

Q Senator Reid, have you asked Senators Clinton and Obama come back and vote on the consumer products bill and -- (off mike)?

SEN. REID: No, I haven't asked the two senators, who are campaigning, who are Democrats, to come back on this bill. But they will, I'm sure, come back when we do the budget next week.

Q Senator, are you close to an agreement with any judicial nominations? Do you think you'll hit the goal of 15 or 17?

SEN. REID: No.

Q No?

SEN. REID: We're not close.

Q (Off mike) -- the housing is in a crisis, there's been a lot spoken about people who are taking foreclosure; numbers as high as 2 percent of homeowners could see their homes foreclosed. What about the other side of the coin, people who over the last decade have been priced out of the market?

I mean, you know, prices have nearly gone five times (faster than inflation ?) in Las Vegas, nationwide like three times. What about those people who actually might benefit from a burst of the bubble and making homes more affordable?

SEN. REID: I think that's a pretty cruel way to look at things. We have people who are building homes, selling them at market price, and then we have the manipulators come in and work out all these duplicitous loan arrangements. I have indicated here -- standing right here that one of my boys lives in Las Vegas, and the neighborhood where he lives, the houses have gone down in value some 20 percent. But they've gone up enough in the past that I'm not too worried about him, because there was such appreciation in the value of homes.

I don't think we need to look at this for who might benefit from the foreclosure; I think we need to look at those people who are going to suffer irreparably in a -- with a foreclosure. No one benefits from a foreclosure. The homeowner doesn't benefit. The lender doesn't benefit. The neighborhood doesn't benefit. And the entity where the home is located doesn't benefit because it wipes out taxes, and I think that has to be our main concern now.

Yes?

Q The Air Force awarded this flying tanker contract to Northrop Grumman last Friday. Do you think that should be the final word on this, or should Congress weigh in? Should it put restrictions on that? Should it second-guess the decision?

SEN. REID: I listened to the discussion on the Senate floor today led by Senators Murray and Cantwell, and I think it's something we need to take a look at. I think at the very least there should be congressional hearings in the committees of jurisdiction to look into this to see if everything was done appropriately.

Q (Off mike.)

SEN. REID: I'm not going to speculate what might take place in the future. As right now, I think I can speak for the speaker. She and I are totally neutral on this; and we're going to -- at least -- I'm speaking for myself on this -- I'm going to continue being neutral.

Q (Off mike) -- having a protracted battle for the nomination, regardless of who it is?

SEN. REID: I think that if you look at what has happened this past year with the election, it's been tremendously good for Democrats.

We had six quality candidates. We're down to two quality candidates now. We've had -- I don't remember the number, but is it -- how many debates? Twenty debates? Anyway, televised debates, a lot of debates. I think it's been very good for the American people, and I think that there has been to this point no downside with the election going the way it has.

Q Republicans are disputing --

SEN. REID: What's that?

Q Republicans are disputing the 72 filibuster number that you've been talking about. I wonder, is -- they're saying it's not fair to say that the filibuster -- if indeed, say, like, the farm bill, they blocked cloture a couple of times -- (off mike) -- finally passed the Senate and that had passed on a number of occasions. Could you clarify?

SEN. REID: I'd say that that is such a specious argument. I heard that on the floor yesterday. My counterpart Senator McConnell said, well, cloture was invoked. There was 86 senators voted for it. Well, we wouldn't have had the cloture vote if it hadn't been for them, and we wouldn't have had to waste 30 hours had it not been for them.

And it's not just 30 hours. Take, for example, the posture we're in today. We were unable to go forward on the housing stimulus package. The way things used to happen around here we would go to the next bill. The next bill is consumer product safety, a bipartisan bill. We couldn't go to that on Friday. We went to it on Monday. So basically all day Monday we didn't accomplish anything, very little was done, and we weren't able to start that until about noon today. That's when they told us we could go to it. So that argument is foolishness.

Now, in this 72, were there two or three that Democrats caused? Perhaps so. So we'll -- if it'll make everybody feel better, we'll lower the chart to 69. But I mean, their arguments are just absolutely without any reason or logic.

Yes?

Q The consumer product safety bill today, how do you plan to address the public -- (off mike) -- and do you plan to file for cloture?

SEN. REID: Well, I'm not -- this is not a bill to file cloture, and I think people are -- have the opportunity to offer amendments, and we're going to do that for several days and see what happens on this bill.

It's a bill we're going to do our very utmost to complete before we leave here this week, and I've told senators they should be ready for Friday. I didn't say weekend, but that's totally possible. And I told them there will likely be votes before Monday, I mean, before noon on Monday.

I -- we need to get to the budget resolution by Tuesday afternoon to finish that. You know, there's 50 hours statutory time on that. There's a vote-a-thon at the end.

So I don't think we need to talk about cloture, at this stage yet, on consumer safety. It's a bipartisan bill, and I would hope that we wouldn't need to do that.

Q When you spoke to Senators Grassley and Baucus about trade, did you also discuss with them the Trade Adjustment Assistance Bill, and when that would come to the floor?

SEN. REID: Yes. Talked to about Trade Adjustment Assistance. They're trying to work on when that will come to the floor. But yes, I did talk to them about that.

Q But, so you're waiting for them to complete the work. You have no timeline on when you might want to consider that.

SEN. REID: No, that's up to them.

One more. Okay.

Q (Off mike.)

SEN. REID: Pardon me.

Q How confident are you that -- (off mike)?

SEN. REID: Well, there's no sure things in the world. But Democrats are united that we need a budget. We're going to do that. We may wait.

Senator Conrad is working to find out whether we're going to have reconciliation -- that is, spending and taxes -- on this. We may or may not do that. But I -- Senator Conrad has done this for what, 15 years -- this budget resolution. We've got a very unified caucus.

And we're in fat city now compared to last year. Because at this time last year, Senator Johnson was still very, very sick in the hospital. Our margin last year was 50 to 49. That's -- we feel pretty bloated this year. It's 51 to 49.

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